Thought Center

Get to know our intern, Crystal, by reading her bio below. She will also be blogging about her life as a “Startern” for us every week!

About Crystal:

Crystal Franco is a tenacious communications student from California State University, Dominguez Hills. Wanting to gain valuable experience in the field of public relations, Crystal applied to numerous public relations company and is thrilled to have landed an internship at Starfish PR.

Crystal is looking forward to learning first-hand what is like to work as a PR specialist. As the first person in her family to go to college, Crystal is motivated to have a successful career in PR or journalism. She is also an animal lover and hopes to one day start her own non-profit organization to help mistreated and abandoned animals.

It is back to school time, which also means that many college students are starting internships. In fact, I was inspired to write this post because we have a potential intern coming in to interview today!

Starfish PR is a small (but mighty) operation, so we get our own coffee and do our own grunt work. While our interns should not expect to be running the company by the end of the week, they should expect to jump in and do some real PR work!

We love for our interns to share their specific interests and internship goals with us. That way we can identify assignments and upcoming events that will get them excited about the field of PR. Our goal is to inspire our interns, not crush them!

Another important part of the first week, is having our interns become familiar with our clients. We ask them to visit our clients’ websites, blogs, facebook and twitter accounts and take notes, as well as ask questions.

Savanah Wernick interned with Starfish PR during the summer of 2010 & 2011. I just love this post she wrote for us following her first tour in 2010. She is a total team player and we will always cherish this little fish!

To be labeled an “intern” doesn’t indicate much responsibility. When you tell someone you’re an intern, the same question stings the conversation every time. “Oh, how nice,” they say, “is it paid?” You reply no, they nod, and immediately formulate assumptions that don’t give you much credit. She’s just there to watch. She’ll be the one getting the coffee, walking the dogs.

To be fair, these conclusions aren’t completely off the mark. In the setting of a large, multi-level business, it’s easy to imagine those who are not on payroll to get lost in the shuffle.